The Pros and Cons of Breathing
by ThePenguinofDeath
Summary: Castiel's feelings about his new life as a human. Small hints of Destiel if you look hard enough. One-shot.


**When I get tired, I ramble. So I decided to put my rambling's into a fanfic. It's not that great, but hey, I'm tired, and I really need a way to relieve stress. Feel free to write a review with any comments – constructive criticism is very welcome!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Supernatural or any of the characters – trust me, if I did, Castiel's boxers in that season 9 preview would have been a LOT tighter.**

**The Pros and Cons of Breathing**

Castiel found both good and bad sides to being human.

On the downside, moving anywhere was slow – you had to take transport, which seemed slow and confining, or walk, which just made you fatigued. You had to remember to eat, drink, sleep, urinate and do many other things which had once appeared trivial – now they consumed at least half of Castiel's day. If you got injured, you felt it – really felt it – and it could take months to heal, months of inconvenience and random pains and wishing that there was anything you could do to stop this. Emotions were so much stronger, too – they clouded judgement and made every decision seemingly a billion times harder.

But being human made Castiel appreciate things that he had never noticed before – the first bite of a steak when you hadn't eaten all day, the relaxing hot water after a shower after a good hunt, the amazing feeling of a massage when you were tense and just wanted to curl up somewhere and hide. The same emotions that Castiel hated for making things complicated also made things so much better – he had thought, as an angel, that he loved his father, but experiencing love as a human made him see that that emotion was nowhere near as strong as he had thought it was. He could now say that he loved chocolate more than he had loved his father back then (Gabriel was right – it really was a substance that could cure everything).

When Castiel had finally reached the bunker where the Winchester's were, filthy and tired and with a strange ache in his stomach and a pressing pain in his bladder, he had felt useless. Dean had instantly berated him for his absence and practically hurled him into the room where Sam was lying, clearly feverish with seriously laboured breathing, and told him to heal him. Castiel had felt a huge, crushing feeling (which he later defined as guilt) consuming him, as he told Dean that he couldn't heal Sam, he was human now, a confused, tired human who was about as useful as a broken tricycle. Or so Dean said. That had been a particularly bad day for Castiel, and he had spent many hours afterwards contemplating whether he really wanted to continue like this.

But things had perked up. Dean was kind, amazingly so at times, and as his anger caused by Castiel's inability to heal his once-more broken brother faded, he started to see how Castiel was struggling. How he was trying so hard to adjust to all these new sensations he was being bombarded with while Dean was chastising him for things that he couldn't control. So Dean started to help, and slowly, Castiel began to adjust – and he found that, in many ways, life as a human really wasn't as bad as he had expected.

There had been plenty of mishaps along the way, but Castiel found that, surprisingly, those memories were some of his fondest. The time that Castiel had asked for assistance in showering, because he didn't know how to wash the shampoo out and he kept getting it in his eyes and it hurt, Dean had flushed bright red and exclaimed that 'No way in Hell was he showering with another guy.' Confused and hurt, Castiel had retreated to the bathroom and attempted to work out how to set the shower to a temperature that wasn't Cold as Hell or Jerusalem Summer Hot, when after just a few minutes the door had creaked open and Dean had stepped in, muttering something that sounded like a mixture of an apology and a plea for Castiel never to tell anyone, before reaching over to help. And if Castiel finally learnt what humans meant about an 'electric touch' as Dean washed him, hands gently caressing, neither of them mentioned it to anyone else afterwards. It was private – Castiel respected privacy a lot more now that he was human.

Sam hadn't really got better in the few months that Castiel had been human, and he still found his fingers twitching as though trying to heal him every time he visited him in hospital. But all these problems had become easier and easier to cope with, and Castiel had a feeling that one day, they would disappear altogether. Not that he would mention that to Dean – the only reason that Dean hadn't turned his brother's life support machine off was because he still held the hope that Castiel would get his grace back and he able to heal him. Castiel didn't have the heart to tell Dean that he would never be able to get his grace back. Hope was another thing that was much easier to understand as a human.

Now, Castiel had settled into his non-angelic life. He went hunting with Dean (he had fortunately retained his qualities as a fast learner and so was almost worthy of replacing Sam), hustled pool, drank beer and acted just like a human would. He had even ventured back into a den of iniquity and emerged without having mortally offended the girl he was with. It wasn't necessarily a better life than he had had as an angel, but it wasn't a worse one, either. That was really the most important thing.

**I'm not convinced that it's a great ending, but concentration waivers when you're tired... as I said, please do write a review, and feel free to criticise, I always need suggestions on how to improve my work. Suggestions on how to sleep rather than stay up reading fanfics are welcome too!**


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